There is something we ordinary Kenyans take for granted which the high and mighty often have difficulty in obtaining: a good night’s sleep.And I am pretty sure that since he was confirmed by the Supreme Court as the duly elected fourth President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta has not slept very well.
This has nothing to do with his appointment at The Hague later this year. With the case against his alleged "co-perpetrator" ambassador Francis Muthaura having crumbled, Uhuru’s release from the nightmare of the ICC can only be a matter of time.
No, what I imagine must give him sleepless nights, is that the burdens of state are now firmly on his shoulders, and 40 million people are looking up to him to deliver what we may call “development”.
What makes his situation all the more stressful, is that the outgoing President, Mwai Kibaki is, by any standards, a hard act to follow.Where Kibaki's predecessor, Daniel arap Moi's tenure saw the economy effectively stagnate, especially during his final years in power, Kibaki delivered massively on economic growth: Kenya moved from an aid-dependent economy in 2002, to an economy which is well on its way to middle-income status, and is already free of any dependency on donors.
Because President Kibaki's governing style was so deliberately low-key, his achievements have not been fully recognised during his time in office. But if Uhuru stumbles even just a bit in the management of the economy, it will then become crystal clear that we were exceptionally lucky to have Kibaki in charge over the past 10 years.
Why do I say that Uhuru may yet blunder into making us long for the good old days when Kibaki was in charge?Well, largely because Kenya is on the brink of moving from a primarily agriculture-based economy, to a resource-based economy. Between the coal, titanium, oil, and other minerals that foreign prospectors have found within our borders, Kenya in 2017 will differ significantly from what it is today. The only question is whether these resources will be harnessed to produce dozens of newly-minted billionaires (i.e. the Nigeria model of a resource-based economy); or if they will be used to bring to the ordinary Kenyans a modicum of ‘the good life’: free healthcare; free education; and most of all, economic opportunity (i.e. the Botswana model).
Uhuru promised us all these things (plus free laptops) and in case he slackens even just a bit, there will be a bitterly determined parliamentary opposition ready to proclaim that the legitimate expectations of Kenyans are being betrayed by the Jubilee government.
These denunciations will be made all the more pointed, owing to the fact that those in the opposition Cord do not for a second believe that Uhuru actually beat the outgoing PM Raila Odinga, in the recent election. Their narrative is that state machinery was employed to rig Uhuru in.
And speaking of Cord, the other prominent Kenyan who must have had a few sleepless nights by now is Prime Minister Raila Odinga.It is true he has been hailed as a statesman for first going to court when he disagreed with the IEBC over the election result; and then accepting a Supreme Court ruling unfavorable to himself. But that cannot be of any real consolation to a man who has twice come within a whisker of winning the presidency, and both times "lost" after a dubious tallying of votes.
Even the fact that his eventual nemesis, Chief Justice Willy Mutunga will undoubtedly have his “Kivuitu moment” not long from now, cannot be any consolation.This election was by no means the most difficult political battle that Raila has fought: In 2002, we had the full force of the Moi political machine dedicated to seeing Uhuru as Moi’s successor. And this was a political machine that had been 20-years in the making, and was supported by the virtually unlimited financial resources of the Moi and Kenyatta political dynasties.
Kibaki, the united opposition’s candidate, barely survived a road accident, and was wheelchair bound for most of the campaign. And the opposition was then only learning for the first time how to form viable political coalitions.
Despite all this, Raila Odinga, Kalonzo Musyoka, and other key opposition leaders, found a formula for victory against those odds. Why then were they not able to generate a “rigging-proof" margin of victory this time round, when it was their own political futures at stake?
That is the kind of question of which sleepless nights are made.
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